Capacitive surface micromechanical (SMM) pressure sensors are believed to be conventional. In contrast to piezoresistive sensors, capacitive sensors may provide that the measuring capacitors contained can be evaluated with practically no power consumption, since in particular no high currents flow through stress detectors in the form of ohmic resistors. Furthermore, the capacitive measuring signal is largely independent of the temperature.
For many applications, capacitive pressure sensors are desired which can be constructed within the scope of an IC manufacturing process using monolithic integration.